I found really interesting a point made in the conclusion of the white paper about COs which I think deserves more attention.

Any type of organization, for-profit and non-profit, can become a Continuous Organization by setting up a Decentralized Autonomous Trust and funneling all or part of its cash-flows to it.

I discussed with some people that have experience in the non-profit sector about the CO model. What they told me is that one of the main issue of the non-profit sector is that there is a lack of trust for many small “non-profit” organizations, as what is funded is often blurry. For this reason, people tend to donate to bigger and more recognized non profit (that have a better “brand name”).

Small non profit are overlooked because of credibility and accountability. Using the CO model can be a game changer in the domain:

more transparency: people will give them more money if they think it is being used responsibly. Why not embed that accountability in immutable code? Having the non profit’s money attached to the autonomous trust can be a solution (maybe some security concerns though)

more trust: it can help people within the organization to understand their finances- often the accountant is one guy who controls everything.

in the US, non profits have to post yearly financial reports of how the money is spent, and the best ones do it quarterly. So that means that if an individual A gives money to an organization in January when they announce a new project A like, they might decide in June to abandon the project A donated to, and A won’t know until the next yearly report in the following January. With blockchain, A could literally go online and see the full accounting of the trust instantly at any time, and get notifications when the organization changes their projects.

Hi @dmdelr
Very interesting feedback. My first thoughts is that, as a non-profit, the association of a DAO framework like Aragon and a Decentralized Autonomous Trust (DAT) would be super interesting.

Indeed, the DAT in itself does not help much when it comes to transparency (in the sense “where are the funds spent?”) or governance. But by using an Aragon-like DAO to manage the funds raised through the DAT, it becomes very interesting because, all of a sudden, the governance becomes clear and the expenses can be fully transparent (see https://transparency.aragon.org/#/ for an example).

Moreover, I am very excited to see the CO model being adopted by non-profits because it really enables non-profit with a business model. So, it could enable organizations with a social impact maximization purpose to raise funds like a profit maximization seeking company do and the world would get fast-growing social impact organizations. That seems like something very needed if you ask me!